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Starting and running a business or managing one isn’t for the faint of heart. You’re balancing internal and external forces in a continually changing landscape. You’re building strategies, and banking on the future – no matter what it holds. This is where Cadence Bank’s In Good Companies comes in. We share our wealth of knowledge, and insights from noted industry experts, to guide you through the forces shaping business today.
We’re back for Season 6, and this time, we’re setting our sights on the future of work. We’re asking the big questions, like:
What will your career look like in 2030? Or 2050, even?
How is ESG shaping the future of companies?
And how can we leverage AI to our advantage?
We bring together experts from across the board, from Silicon Valley to multinationals like EY, to help you stay on the cutting edge of business. And we get to know those who are building the future of our companies; because at Cadence Bank, we want to hear the human side of every success story.
Hosting our stellar range of guests this season is our new host, Ari Marin. He is a Cadence Bank Senior Vice President and family enterprise advisor, whose specialty is consulting with family-owned and small businesses. Ari’s idea of “good company” is being around creative, insightful people with unique and inspirational stories. For Season 6, he brings in his curiosity and ambition to In Good Companies, to lead discussions with our guests, and bring listeners across the U.S. all the information they need, in one place, in under 30 minutes.
Ready to launch into the future? Then join us!
In Good Companies - Season 6
Episode 3: “A Business Education: Lessons in Entrepreneurship, with John Torrens”
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[00:00:00] SFX: Intro Music In
[00:00:00] John Torrens: Top line is vanity, bottom line is sanity. So yeah, it's good to grow, but is it really doing anything for the organization or is it just causing more trouble? It's hard to predict because we're training students now for jobs that don't even exist, right? So critical thinking, problem solving, adaptability, opportunity, recognition… Those types of things I try to teach the young entrepreneurs that I work with.
[00:00:00]Ari Marin: You’re listening to Season 6 of In Good Companies, from Cadence Bank: The podcast where we guide you through the forces shaping your business – inside and out. This season, we’ve got our eyes on the future of work. I’m your host, Ari Marin.
[00:00:00] SFX: Intro Music Out
[00:00:00] Ari Marin VO: If you were with us a couple of episodes ago… And I hope you were… You will remember this mind boggling stat: 80% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 were not invented five years ago.
It’s something that stuck with me, because it opens many questions. Like… If you’re an entrepreneur, how do you know where to start? What skills do you need to get some skin in the game?
The future of work will change the nature of business education. So today, it’s time to do some learning. And to hit the books, we’ve got just the right guest.
[00:00:00] John Torrens: My name's John Torrens. I'm a professor of entrepreneurial practice at Syracuse University and also co-founder, president and executive director of Sprout Therapy Group in upstate New York.
[00:00:10] Ari Marin VO: John Torrens is the perfect blend of business and education. An award-winning Professor of Entrepreneurial practice, at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management… He has been teaching, mentoring, and coaching entrepreneurs for over 15 years.
He is also a self-taught founder. He has built and run two successful speech therapy groups. And while he’s now an established leader, he knows what aspiring entrepreneurs go through to make the grade. Because… He’s been there.
[00:00:10] John Torrens: Mowed lawns, shoveled driveways, delivering newspapers, buying packs of gum, and selling them off by the piece, anything just to hustle and make a little spending money as a young kid.
[00:00:22] Ari Marin: How much do you charge for a stick of gum?
[00:00:28] John Torrens: I think it was like 10 cents or something. I forget. This is going back quite a few years, but yeah, talk to me later if you need some.
[00:00:28] Ari Marin VO: We’ll take you up on that offer John. And actually, let’s do some talking now!
In our conversation today, we’re diving into the world of business education. How do we learn to run our companies? Where can we find new opportunities? What practices are gaining traction across the board? And what can we expect from the next generation of founders? Dig out your notebook, and get ready for a lesson in business education.
And first… Let’s learn by example, and hear how John started out in the field himself.
[00:00:33] Ari Marin: You didn't start off with a business education yourself. You pursued a doctorate further down the line. What was the seed, the idea that got you to start your business?
[00:00:43] John Torrens: That's right. I was a psychology major as an undergrad and didn't really know what I was going to do with that. So I went to graduate school to become a speech language pathologist, and I decided just to go out on my own as a solo practitioner. And the type of services I offer, insurance companies will say, "Hey, for this service, this is what we'll pay you." So I didn't really have much pricing flexibility, but at the time, I was a young guy. I was 23 or something, not very old, and I just took it. And I was billing myself out at $45 an hour, which at the time seemed incredible. I had gone from earning $28,000 a year to now $45 an hour, and I thought I had made it. Once I realized that my income was going to be limited to the number of hours in my day, I had to do something a little different. So I just went down the path of trying to hire people.
[00:01:42] Ari Marin: I listened to a podcast maybe a year ago about an entrepreneur, and he was saying that the way he priced his different ventures, he based it on the percentages of no's he would receive, and if it was 70 to 80%, something like that, then he would drop the price a little bit and then he would start with that price. And so I always thought that was an interesting way to price your product.
[00:02:02] John Torrens: Yeah. I mean, if I were to do it now, of course we'd go through the whole analysis and find that price quarter of the mass where you unlock the greatest number of customers at the greatest profit potential and all that, but at the time, I just took what they said they would give me.
[00:02:18] Ari Marin: Got you. You mentioned the people that work underneath you. Do you have any advice for somebody that's looking to scale their business but doesn't really know how to hire anybody or even where to look?
[00:02:30] John Torrens: Well, that was my biggest question. I was like, "Well, I want to hire somebody, but how does one go about that? Well, what do you actually do?" My approach to finding people is pretty similar to most others, really. You post the jobs in the right places, you take the resume, you do a screening. The biggest part is the interview. You get to know them a little bit. I use what I call the canoe test, and is this somebody I'd want to spend eight hours in a canoe with? Maybe that's not the best way to do it, but for me, I have to connect with the person and like them a little bit if they're going to be working with me. So that's important.
Luckily, we have a very specific population we're looking for. So you're a licensed speech-language pathologist, a licensed occupational therapist, licensed physical therapist or psychologist. So it's a pretty defined population. Unfortunately, there's just not enough of them to meet the demand. We offer pre-service opportunities; so internships, externships... Plenty of times we will have somebody come in as an intern and we'll hire them, and that works really well, but it is a challenge. So anybody listening who's wondering, "Hey, what should I do?" Speech, OT, PT, psychology, high demand.
[00:03:44] Ari Marin VO: Point taken: speech therapy makes for good business. But beyond that, John grew his company through his own ambition and energy: venturing in, striking out, being reactive, problem solving on the go… It’s how John hit the ground running. But… At some point, he saw the limits of his approach. And he sought out new resources.
[00:03:44] John Torrens: I remember one day sitting around my conference table with however many, I might have had eight or 10 employees at the time, and I was just looking at them thinking that they trust in me for their livelihood, and that scared me a little bit. So I went up to the university and I said, "Hey, I've never taken an accounting course. I don't know anything about accounting. I'd like to just take an accounting course as an unmatriculated student." And they tried to talk me into doing an MBA and I already had a master's degree and I didn't want a second one. So I thought maybe a doctoral degree is a good idea. And at the time, I had no idea what I was getting into. It ended up being far more challenging and rigorous than I thought, but I kept going and very happy that I finished. I went into it not necessarily for the degree, but because I wanted the knowledge. So every single course I took, I used my business, my growing business as the lab experiment, and that was a really great way to grow the company.
[00:04:47] Ari Marin VO: So first thing to know about business education: you can learn through school or educate yourself on your own. Either way: you need to practice. Apply yourself. Experiment! You will only acquire new skills after doing things first hand.
Here’s proof. You know how… John had an appetite for education? Well, just because you’re curious doesn’t make you an expert. And when he got his teaching role at Syracuse… John didn’t exactly ace the test.
[00:04:47] John Torrens: I thought that teaching it was going to be a slam dunk because I had been doing it, and I'd been doing entrepreneurship, growing a company, and I could easily teach this to students is what I thought. It is much harder than you think, especially if you hadn't done it before. I remember, I still have one. There was a student who summed it up in his written evaluation. He said, "Torrens is a triple threat of ignorance, stupidity, and disorganization, and you shouldn't allow him back on campus." I still have that one because it was motivating.
[00:05:22] Ari Marin VO: Motivating? I guess so! Because 16 years later, you can still find him on campus, running courses and working closely with students.
[00:05:22] John Torrens: I teach mostly seniors, some juniors and some graduate students as well. So the courses I teach are mostly about new venture creation, some electives. I teach a course on negotiations and deal-making, then I just launched a course on entrepreneurial well-being this past May, which was really fun to teach. But the courses I teach are generally pretty intensive. And I do other things like field trips, business visits. We've got one coming up into the Adirondack Park in upstate New York. The Adirondack Park is full of small businesses with aging ownership and they don't really have anybody to transition the companies to. So there's a lot of public support to try to get new younger blood up into the park to take over these businesses. So we're going to take the students on a tour of the businesses. We're going to have them meet with economic development, professionals and bankers and the owners themselves, just to understand how one would take over a small business in the Adirondack Park. But at the core of it, we're trying to teach them critical thinking, adaptability, and just how to use or employ an entrepreneurial mindset, which is focused on exploiting opportunities and chasing opportunities versus worrying about resource constraints, which is a fact of life in entrepreneurship. So I think just giving them the flexibility to succeed or adapt in any environment is probably the key.
[00:06:50] Ari Marin VO: When we look at the future of business… It’s clear that emerging entrepreneurs will need a new mindset. They’ll need to focus on flexibility, and bounce back to seize new opportunities… But they’ll also have to stay level headed. And move slowly, but surely.
[00:06:50] Ari Marin: When it comes to growth, what's your approach and what do you teach your students?
[00:06:56] John Torrens: Well, you have to grow because if you're not growing, you're dying, and you've got to keep up with all your other expenses that will also grow. But I've shifted my philosophy on growth to just chasing growth for growth's sake to making it meaningful and focusing on profitable growth. I had a mentor a while ago, and he used to tell me that top line is vanity, bottom line is sanity. So it puts it in perspective where, yeah, it's good to grow, but is it really doing anything for the organization or is it just causing more trouble? And so those are the types of things that I focused on and sometimes it's hard to predict because we're training students now for jobs that don't even exist, like the jobs that we're filling now or the companies that people are starting now didn't exist even five years ago, or a lot of them didn't. So we get to focus on just general preparedness, so critical thinking, problem solving, adaptability, opportunity recognition, ideation, entrepreneurial intention, those types of things instead of anything specific in terms of this is exactly how you do something.
[00:08:09] Ari Marin VO:We have to bank on the people, because there’s only so far we can see. And if we’re talking about the next generation of entrepreneurs, John says we have reasons to be hopeful.
[00:08:09] John Torrens: I have to say I really admire and appreciate the students that I work with, just the way they approach life. And they get a bad rep, I think. You've probably seen posts and memes that take a jab at Gen Z or whatever. And I think every generation has things that you can make fun of, but this generation to me, they're very socially conscious. They're into corporate social responsibility. If they're not going to start their own venture, they want to work for a company that has some social responsibility aspect to what they do.
So in my assessment, this is a very in tune group in terms of social entrepreneurship, doing good, and they haven't bought into probably what their parents did, which is you work for a corporation for however long you do, and then you retire with your defined contribution plan and you go play golf or shuffleboard or whatever. They're not into that. They're not enthusiastic about just trading their time for money working for somebody else. They want to make sure they've got meaning in their life and they're doing something good. And they seem very kind. They're very sensitive, but they have this sensibility. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves.
I had one student, this was a couple of years ago, and he's in my office just talking to me about his future, and I said, "Well, what kind of job do you want to get?" And he looked at me like I was crazy, and he's like, "Job?" He's like, "I'm not going to get a job." He's like, "I'm going to make my own job. I'm going to have my own company. I'm going to create jobs." And I thought, "All right, that's great."
And the thing that seems to motivate them is being in control of their destiny because they don't really want to be at the whim of some corporation who could lay them off, fire them or furlough them without an explanation just because it's good for the company. They want to take control. They're into mental health, they understand the value of it. It's not stigmatized so much. My generation, if you talked about mental health or going to therapy or going to see a psychologists, you'd be laughed at or you'd be minimized or it'd be a sign of weakness, but they tend to value it. And they also are not afraid to tap into their own inner power. They work on manifestation. And so I think they have more of a sense that they're part of a collective whole than individuals.
[00:10:39] Ari Marin: Have you ever, I guess, looked into their motives on why they have this cultural vision of doing good and promoting positive change?
[00:10:50] John Torrens: No, I haven't really taken a deep dive into it. I mean, I've read a few things here and there. I mean, the crash we had in 2008 could've been traumatic for a lot of them. They were very young. They saw their parents net worth evaporates, things like that. And then, of course, they were freshmen in college when COVID hit. So they've had some weird things happen throughout their life, and I think it just... I don't know if it gave them a distrust of society or government or power in general, but I think it motivated them to claim their sovereignty or their power, if that makes any sense.
[00:11:28] Ari Marin: Yeah, just speaking as a millennial, I remember getting into the workforce and my thing was I wanted a place that allowed me to show what I can do and how smart I was, and it was really about a sense of empowerment. And I remember I was at a job, and it was a well paying job, but I didn't get that sense and I hated it there. And I would talk to my manager about it. "Is it about money?" she said. And it just struck me that maybe in her generation more money would've solved all the problems. But now, I'm 41 years old and I've been hiring some young people getting into the workforce and try to, I guess, curate their experience to something that I would've enjoyed. And I've seen that that doesn't work on them. And so it's really interesting because it's like, whoa, I guess I'm not young anymore because I don't share these values and I don't quite understand what motivates these people, but I'm trying to find out.
[00:12:23] John Torrens: Yeah. No, it's truly a joy getting to know them and I've been blessed with being able to be surrounded by them. I mean, their energy is incredible. They've got amazing dreams and it's just a lot of fun to be around them.
[00:12:38] Ari Marin VO: The way John talks about the next generation… It’s uplifting. More independence, resilience, a bigger commitment to social impact… It’s something to feel excited about, long-term. But to reach their goals, aspiring leaders will need more than their hard work and commitment.
[00:12:38] John Torrens: Long-term success should include longevity, not only of the venture, but the entrepreneur. So we often get into this dysfunctional, weird hero worship of entrepreneurs that literally kill themselves or burn themselves out for their companies. You've heard the mythology of the founder who works more hours than there are in a week to start their company and they're proud of it, which is great, but at the end of the day, you're a person first and then an entrepreneur, and you want to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. So I think taking care of yourself mentally, physically, spiritually so that you can enjoy everything you've built and created is really important because it doesn't do anybody any good to spend a career building wealth only to see it evaporate in your last 10 years because you're paying for chronic conditions that could've been prevented or just not being able to enjoy it because you don't have mobility or mental acuity or whatever it is.
[00:13:44] Ari Marin: Just through my own experience and talking to business owners, I often harp on the importance of redundancies, especially as it pertains to not just day-to-day operations, but also that entrepreneur leadership aspect of running a business. It's very hard to teach, and I think probably there's tons of studies and plenty of schools that exist just to prove that point. But it's really interesting to talk to business owners and see that a lot of them don't do great at making sure that if they're becoming capacitated at some point, who's really going to run the business? I think it's an important point to bring up.
[00:14:20] John Torrens: No, for sure. It's something that everybody should think about, and just taking care of yourself as a preventive measure or a risk mitigating factor. You can do a lot just to make sure you don't have to worry about that even though you do have a plan in place.
[00:14:34] SFX: Music Bed In
[00:14:34] Ari Marin VO: Taking care. Of yourself, of your employees… It means looking after your business too. John learnt that the hard way.
He’s always been a visionary. High flying thoughts, a new idea every hour, always an eye for solutions… But sometimes… That also means he’s restless, he struggles to focus. A few years ago, that put him in a tough spot. His team was struggling to keep up when he changed his mind… The company was out of sync.
That’s until John was diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder. When he factored in his ADHD, John started looking after himself… And he reshaped the dynamics of his team… Today, he tends to say…
[00:14:34] John Torrens: I'm probably the least important person in my business.
[00:14:36] Ari Marin VO: And that doesn't mean he's not involved. It means he's playing on everyone’s strengths, and leading better.
[00:14:36] SFX: Music Bed Fade Out
[00:14:36] John Torrens:I was able to just be aware that I'm wired this way. I've got a little neurodiversity that it's something I have to deal with, and I just had to understand how I show up and what other people's experience of me was. I did try medication and it didn't really work that well for me. I mean, it did mitigate my symptoms, but then it also tamped down what I thought were the really helpful aspects of that ADHD side of my personality. It made me much more thoughtful, intentional, slowed me down a little bit, and it really highlighted the value of a strong number two or second in command because that's the person who has to be my regulator or be the translator between me and the people who I have to lead.
[00:15:24] Ari Marin: What's that process of letting go when you're starting to delegate such a big responsibility to somebody else?
[00:15:30] John Torrens: For me, it was amazing. It was so liberating because I had all this pressure and guilt that I'm the founder, I'm the entrepreneur, I should be able to do this, and if I can't do it, I got to learn how to do it. But then you realize that that's silly, and I should just focus on doing the things that I like to do and that I'm good at and hire somebody else who is good at doing those other things and likes them. So I guess it was really liberating just to be able to get competent people around me who like to do the things that I didn't like to do, were good at the things that I wasn't good at, and I could just let it go.
[00:16:03] Ari Marin: You seem to have a pretty good sense of the things you like and what you're good at. How did you come to that self-realization? A lot of people don't know what they're not good at or have some trouble identifying that thing, but for you, what was it like, or did you just always knew?
[00:16:18] John Torrens: Yeah, I guess I always knew, but the way I could tell is that if I'm procrastinating or resisting something, chances are it's nothing that I really should be doing. The things that I jump on and I pay attention to and I focus on, those are the things I should be doing. Those are the things I like to do. Now, of course, everybody's got things that they have to do that maybe they don't want to do, but I'm talking about things that just are sitting on your to-do list forever, you're not going to get to them, or maybe you try to do it and you do it halfway and it doesn't get done well, and then finally you realize it's going to be much more effective to have somebody else do that for you. So I think the way I've always made that assessment is, how much resistance and procrastination am I giving this?
[00:17:05] Ari Marin: You as an entrepreneur, I'm sure that you identify some traits in some of your staff similar to you perhaps so that they may have an entrepreneur mindset. Do you help them scratch that itch? How do you foster that while still maybe maintaining that employee as part of your business? How do you motivate them, in other words?
[00:17:24] John Torrens: I try to give them opportunities to be entrepreneurial inside the company. So employee and entrepreneurial mindset, skill set, do something innovative inside the company. Part of that is creating an environment where they have permission to fail because nobody wants to do something new and fail if it means their job. So it's just giving them the confidence to go for it. Something even simple as, "Hey, let's do a free screening program in a preschool to identify children who need services.," or, "Hey, there's this really cool new innovative treatment modality. I think there's a need for it. It's going to require a little capital expenditure on the equipment, but I think we could do it." Yeah, let's go for it and give it a shot. Or there's a whole other region or geography where we could hire people for, and there's a lot of kids who need help, should we do that? So yeah, giving them opportunities to be entrepreneurial inside of the organization has seemed to work out pretty well.
[00:18:19] Ari Marin VO: I like what John is saying here. Learning is a continuous thing; and we go on educating ourselves long after college, in our next job, our newest venture… And so on.
In fact, if we don’t try and fail – we can’t get to the next stage. So when we look at the future, we need to ask ourselves: how can we stay educated and meet new challenges? What can we try next? We need to look for opportunities, and let them take the wheel.
[00:18:25] John Torrens: Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity regardless of the resources you control. So again, it's opportunity-driven, not resource-constrained, and I think that's a really positive, liberating way to look at it. It doesn't mean that you have to have money or connections or anything like that. It just means you have to keep going and thinking, "Okay, what can I do right now? What step can I take now to advance this goal?" Even in areas that are maybe falling on tough times or depressed, there's always opportunity. You just have to find it.
Syracuse, which really had some tough times over the past couple of decades is seeing a major renaissance. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Micron is building chip fabs here. So there's this renewed sense of energy and excitement, and you can imagine what it's going to take in the community to support an effort that big. The opportunity that is going to be presented to people if they can identify the opportunities and act on them is going to be enormous. So maybe Syracuse got lucky, although I'm sure luck had less to do with it than a lot of hard work and elbow grease by our government officials and people like that, but yeah, Syracuse is in a really great spot right now. And opportunity comes because of social change, government regulatory change, scientific changes, inventions. Opportunity lives almost everywhere, and it's really fun teaching students how to identify and pursue them.
[00:20:58] Ari Marin: For anyone listening who is looking to launch their own venture, what's your recommendation?
[00:21:04] John Torrens: Well, I would check out if you have a university or a local community college nearby. Chances are they've got an entrepreneurship center or a business incubator, or at least a department on entrepreneurship. And I would start there. The other thing I would do is pursue peer networking opportunities. I mentioned YPO earlier. It's for larger companies, but then there's companies like Entrepreneur Network. I've benefited an awful lot from my YPO peers and just leaning on people who've been there and done that, and the realization that no matter how hard I think I've got it right now, there's always somebody who's had it harder and has gone through something much tougher and survived. So I like to think of those examples and stories when things get hard. I just realize that other people have survived much worse and I'm resilient enough to do the same.
[00:23:19] SFX: Outro Music In
[00:23:19] Ari Marin VO: Staying resilient as we continue to grow – that’s the final lesson from John today. It’s simple… And yet, there’s a lot to it. So here’s the recap:
There are many ways to get a business education. Whether you’re a self-starter… Or a by-the-book executive with a spotless academic record… There is something out there for you.
You can find a peer group… Take a course… Or even start with some documentation. Whatever it is: grab your resources and PRACTICE. Your work is a good place to experiment. So have a play! And encourage your team to do the same. The more you do, the more you know.
If you want to keep on growing, you’ll need flexibility. The future of work is kind of unwritten. Look for opportunities first; assess them critically; take it slow; and then make your move.
With the next generation of founders coming on the job market, the world of business is going to change. And that’s actually exciting; we can learn from each other. Remember to look after yourself and your team throughout that process; that’s the key to longevity.
Finally: get to know yourself. Your strengths, your weaker side – they’re going to drive your business whether you like it or not. The more you learn about yourself, the better positioned you are to make strategic decisions. The road is long. It’s not always straightforward. But it is worth it.
I can only thank John Torrens for being with us today. His transparency, enthusiasm and personal take on resilience is nothing short of inspiring.
As for me, I’ll see you next week for another business tale that will send us flying into the future of work. Until then!
[00:25:23] SFX: Outro Music Out
[00:25:23] Ari Marin: In Good Companies is a podcast from Cadence Bank, member FDIC, Equal Opportunity Lender. Our production team is Natalie Barron and Eydie Pengelly. Our executive producer is Danielle Kernell. This podcast is made in collaboration with the team at Lower Street. Writing and production from Lise Lovati. Sound design and mixing by Ben Crannell.